Economy & Work :: Manufacturing > Overview
Manufacturing + ICTs = Competitiveness + Jobs
In an increasingly competitive global marketplace for manufacturers, investing in Information & Communication Technologies is crucial to improving processes, reducing environmental impacts, making their partnerships more efficient, and creating smarter products which can be quickly adapted to changing demand. A European approach is essential to helping many sectors realise these benefits.
Overview ¦ Example Projects
Today's manufacturing environment is increasingly competitive, with customers demanding a wider choice of better products, faster. Satisfying this demand requires a greater number of more specialised companies, working together in increasingly complex networks. These "value chains" have to be both robust - to deliver reliably - and flexible, allowing both companies and consumers to reap the full benefits of innovation and competition.
While almost all companies can benefit in some way from adopting ICTs (see the eBusiness theme), manufacturers are therefore turning to ICTs to help them build and manage these networks. They are also integrating ICTs further into their processes and products, increasing efficiencies, improving quality control and creating a new generation of "smart products".
Technologies such as Radio Frequency Identification (RFID), for example, are now revolutionising supply chain and delivery processes; paradigms such as digital ecosystems are knitting ever closer companies together.
For these technologies to realise their full potential, however, researchers, companies, governments and regulators across Europe need to work together, pooling resources to both develop the technologies and solve issues such as interoperability, standards and regulation. Europe is therefore co-funding research, helping European manufacturing industry reach a strategic view of its future, and ensuring that public policy keeps pace with these rapidly evolving technologies.
Further Details and Quicklinks
- Policies
- Activities
- See Also
- Relevant Policies
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- i2010: the Investment and Innovation in Research pillar of i2010 aims to propel Europe to world class standards in ICT research and innovation.
- The RFID Public Consultation: a wide-ranging public debate on the use in Europe of Radio Frequency IDentification technology, which has huge advantages for business but raises questions of privacy, security, international compatibility and more.
- The Privacy Enhancing Technologies page covers projects in various Commission programmes aimed at minimising risks such as identity theft, discriminatory profiling, continuous surveillance and fraud.
- Relevant Activities
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The key European activity in this field is research - see the IS Research theme for an introduction, browse some relevant Example Projects or jump straight to the following sites:
- The New Working Environments site covers both policy development and research in the field of designing new working environments and organising the world of work in the networked economy;
- The EU's new ICT research programme (FP7, 2007-2013)
includes two relevant Challenges:
- Components, systems and engineering: reinforcing European electronics manufacturing, boosting industries as diverse as semiconductors, transport, communications and industrial automation;
- Cognitive Systems, Interaction, Robotics: funding research into next generation ICT systems and products, including extending robotics to small scale manufacturing and developing embedded systems to make products smarter.
- Similarly, a number of Strategic Objectives under FP6
(2002-2006) address manufacturing:
- Products and services engineering 2010: collaborative technologies for extended service and product development, including distributed manufacturing;
- ICT for Networked Businesses: developing technologies crucial for product lifecycles and innovative organisational systems for enterprises - see the ICT for Enterprise Networking site, and the (external) Digital Ecosystems site.
- Public-Private Partnership: The Artemis Joint Technology Initiative will pool the resources of private industry, EU and national programmes to steer Europe's research in embedded computing systems, increasingly essential for many key industrial sectors.
- Technology Platforms have been established to bring together companies, research institutions and others to establish Strategic Research Objectives for Europe in fields such as Photonics, Nanoelectronics, Smart Systems & Micro/Nanosystems (EPoSS) and Robotics
- More relevant research:
- Europe INNOVA: the Opto-Micro-Nano (OMN) Innovative Network is helping structure European research in these technologies, which are crucial to applications as diverse as ICTs, manufacturing, energy and healthcare.
- See Also
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Highlights from the Manufacturing Newsroom and Library:
- News: Commission proposes a European policy strategy for smart radio tags (15 March 2007)
-
Speech: An innovation-friendly, modern Europe (President Barroso, 6 December 2006)
- Report: New Working Environments. A Decade Of Achievement. A Strategy For The Next Decade (September 2006)
- For the latest eBusiness news, publications and more from the Newsroom & Library, see right hand column, or select Society & Culture when you subscribe to the Portal Newsroom Update;
See also:
- European Monitoring Centre for Change - Sector Futures reports on Automotive sector, Chemicals, Textiles and leather
- e-BusinessW@tch by sector
Last Updated March 2007